Efficient Parallel Computer Simulation of the Motion Behaviors of Closed-Loop Multibody Systems
This paper presents an efficient parallelizable algorithm for the computer-aided simulation and numerical analysis of motion behaviors of multibody systems with closed-loops. The method is based on cutting certain user-defined system interbody joints so that a system of independent multibody subchains is formed. These subchains interact with one another through associated unknown constraint forces fc at the cut joints. The increased parallelism is obtainable through cutting joints and the explicit determination of associated constraint forces combined with a sequential O(n) method. Consequently, the sequential O(n) procedure is carried out within each subchain to form and solve the equations of motion while parallel strategies are performed between the subchains to form and solve constraint equations concurrently. For multibody systems with closed-loops, joint separations play both a role of creation of parallelism for computing load distribution and a role of opening a closed-loop for use of the O(n) algorithm. Joint separation strategies provide the flexibility for use of the algorithm so that it can easily accommodate the available number of processors while maintaining high efficiency. The algorithm gives the best performance for the application scenarios for n>>1 and n>>m, where n and m are number of degree of freedom and number of constraints of a multibody system with closed-loops respectively. The algorithm can be applied to both distributed-memory parallel computing systems and shared-memory parallel computing systems.